1. Technical Field
The invention is related to a ubiquitous computing environment, and more particularly to a system and process for providing a geometric model database for use in aggregating information and responding to queries about the environment's geometric state.
2. Background Art
Ubiquitous computing revolves around extending computational activities beyond the current desktop model and into the environment. In future homes and offices, access to computing should be as natural as access to lighting. Users should not be required to go to a special place (i.e., the desktop) to interact with the computer. Rather, the computer should be available to interface with the user anywhere in the home or office (or more generally anywhere in an arbitrarily large environment), through whatever set of devices is available, be they fixed or carried by the user.
It is noted that the term computer is used loosely here in that the user actually would have access to a wide variety of computing and information services, which will likely employ many computers and “smart” devices such as PDA's, mobile phones, cameras, etc. For example, computing services such as web browsing, document editing, or video conferencing are envisioned. Thus, it should be understood that when the term computer is used in connection with the concept of ubiquitous computing, in actuality many computers may be involved non-exclusively in a single interactive session.
The usefulness of an ubiquitous computing system is greatly enhanced if it maintains an awareness of the users, including such things as their locations and orientation (i.e. which way they are facing). One goal of such a system would then be to understand the physical and functional relationship between the users and various I/O devices. Such knowledge could be employed to allow a user to move from room to room while still maintaining an interactive session with the computer. Through cameras, microphones and other perceptual devices or sensors, the user would always be in touch with the computer, no matter where the computer is physically located. Conversely, through displays, speakers, and other output devices, the computer will always be able to contact the user. For example, the system could track the location of a person and transfer a current computing session from a monitor in one room, to a different monitor in another room where the user enters, while the user continues to control the session via a PDA carried on his person.
As can be imagined, a fundamental unifying aspect of ubiquitous computing is a representation of the physical relationships between people, things, and devices—in other words a geometric model of the environment. To date, no satisfactory geometric modeling program exists.
The present invention provides this needed geometric modeling program in the form of a dynamic database that maintains information about the physical relationships between users, various I/O devices and sensors, as well as passive things in the world such as furniture, doors and walls.
It is noted that in the remainder of this specification, the description refers to various individual publications identified by a numeric designator contained within a pair of brackets. For example, such a reference may be identified by reciting, “reference [1]” or simply “[1]”. Multiple references will be identified by a pair of brackets containing more than one designator, for example, [3, 18, 22, 9]. A listing of the publications corresponding to each designator can be found at the end of the Detailed Description section.